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London basks in the sun in July last year Credit: Jeff Moore/Empics Entertainment

Scientists from Imperial College London say that in the most vulnerable districts, in London and the southeast, the odds of dying from heart or lung causes increased by more than 10 per cent for every 1C rise in temperature.

Those most at risk areas include more deprived districts of London such as Hackney and Tower Hamlets, with the odds of dying more than doubling on very hot days.

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But all that extra use has taken its toll on the Royal Parks deckchairs, and there's more hot weather on the way, so 6,720 of them will have their old canvas stripped and recycled into reusable bags. .

That means two miles (4,700 metres) of new canvas has had to be ordered. Enough to stretch from Buckingham Palace to Primrose Hill.

In the last couple of hours the Met Office has advised that it is likely to downgrade its heatwave warning from level 3 to level 2 over the weekend as temperatures are dropping - but it could well be raised again next week as temperatures rise again.